When I was out for my morning walk yesterday, I saw a woman raking debris in her yard after the heavy wind storm we had. She said, “Hi” as I passed by, and I returned the greeting. She then said, “It never ends.”

Even though it was a casual comment from a person I didn’t know about the problems the recent weather caused, it was also a plea for respite.

“It never ends” is a revealing statement from someone who is feeling weighed down by the world.

Her statement was an accurate one, but it’s not about the weather or the pandemic; it’s really about reality. The “It” is reality, and it never ends. Reality is ongoing and it happens every second of every day.

This woman is not the only one feeling overwhelmed these days. It’s a mental pandemic affecting countless people. You can witness their angst talking to friends on the phone or Facetiming, Skyping, Zooming, or however you connect with others.

Here’s the overarching problem: These folks are tired of reality and don’t know how to remedy their feelings about it.

Wishing reality will end won’t do it. The remedy is learning to respond to reality vs. reacting to it. Reacting is our conditioning. It’s what we were mentally trained to do. Responding is looking at what is currently presented and giving yourself a choice. There is no choice in a reaction. “A” always causes “B.”

But what if you went further into the alphabet for a response other than “B”? If you do, you’ll find there are infinite ways to respond that go well past “Z.” When you offer a different response other than your normal one, you tap into a different area of your brain, and solutions you would have never thought of make an entrance.

If you want to stay feeling overwhelmed, keep reacting. But if you want more perspectives and different feelings, you need to exercise your ability to respond. We all have that ability but we rarely use it.

Start responding and offering yourself a choice and you’ll take away “it never end’s” antagonizing voice.

All the best,

John

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Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Do you know someone who knows ten times more than you know about a subject but can’t fight their way out of a paper bag when it comes to translating their knowledge into action?

I refer to that as “Caught up in the teachings.” It happens in every field: academia, therapy, religion, and sports just to name a few.

There’s a professional golfer named Jim Furyk who has one of the ugliest swings on tour. Almost every golf coach wanted to change him because he didn’t have the “proper” mechanics. But it certainly hasn’t kept Jim from winning tournaments and amassing tens of millions of dollars in winnings in his ongoing 28 year career.

Those coaches were trapped by their knowledge which was in hard cement. The rigidity of someone caught up in a philosophy is limiting.

I’m reminded of a Grasshopper quote from years ago: “The more rules you have, the less flexible you are.”

The less flexible you are, the fewer option you’ll perceive.

I like to quote one of my teachers Dr. Dave Dobson from moons ago. When someone asked him if he could help them with a problematic situation he would answer with, “I don’t know what’s not possible.”

We limit our possibilities when we’re bound by the book. It’s helpful to know what’s in the book, but sometimes you have to go off script to get results.

I’m reminded of another quote from another one of my teachers: NLP pioneer John Grinder. He said, “If you alway do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got.” If you’re not getting results, you may want to examine your philosophy and your beliefs so you can bypass doctrine and get into doing.

I think any good teacher would like you to add to their teachings, not be hampered by them.

Sometimes you have to just walk past the talk so you don’t get caught up in your own words.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

During these times, I often think of the lyrics from an old Buffalo Springfield song: “A thousand people in the street, singing songs and carrying signs, mostly say, hooray for our side.”

The sad reality is that too many of us have picked a side, rather than looking for a solution.

We’d rather argue our facts and ignore the fact that we’re not seeking a way forward.

Some more lyrics from the Buffalo Springfield: “There’s battle lines being drawn, nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong.”

Not everybody on the other side of whatever side you’re on is wrong.

Our focus is on division rather than finding out how far we can walk together. There may be lines you just can’t cross, but that doesn’t mean you can’t move a little in the opposite direction.

I’m savvy enough to be aware that there are the far fringes on both sides of any issue. Those folks will remain dogmatic and emphatic, and no amount of facts will sway them. If you truly want a solution, these people have to be totally ignored. But most of us are not on the far side but smack dab in the middle.

The Buddha offered us “The Middle Way” – describing the position between extremes as being the way to harmony.

Returning to song lyrics. singer and songwriter Joe South requested: “Walk a mile in my shoes.” You don’t have to be Captain Obvious to know that you’ll never take a single step when your feet are in concrete.

If you want to keep arguing that you’re right, in America, that’s your right. But if you really want a solution, you’ll have to put down your placards and roll up your sleeves and get a glimpse of what the other side needs.

To get more of that view, perhaps you’ll heed the words of Jesus: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

The Grasshopper chimed in with this on my morning walk: “Use your mind; don’t let it use you.”

It got me to “think about” the difference between planning and thinking.

Planning takes discernment – something our minds are quite capable of doing, along with sorting, labeling, and assembling data.

Thinking, on the other hand, is a road to nowhere that has us traveling around in circles.

Thinking thinks us; planning is us using our thinker.

Thinking is an internal voice that’s always blabbing trying to convince you that it’s you. It isn’t. It’s a bunch of thought loops on parade. The minute you engage with one of these thought loops, you have extracted yourself from who you really are and start believing you are who you “think” you are.

A question I often ask is: “Have you ever won an argument with your mind?” The answer is always “No,” yet we engage in this practice daily. You are arguing with a conditioned thought loop. It’s as silly as arguing with a tape recording of your voice.

Start to notice the difference between you using your mind and your mind using you. When you notice you’re in a thought loop, it’s the real you who does the noticing and it’s alerting you that you’re about to enter into another empty, seemingly endless diatribe.

Noticing that you’re in a thought loop creates spaces in your thinking – spaces that can let something new come through, like the idea of using your mind, not letting it use you.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 8-3-20.

Read the written version here.

Make sure to download a FREE copy of my ebook: INTER RUPTION: The Magic Key To Lasting Change here.

What’s the difference between an “Aha” and “That idea has possibilities”?

Sometimes we confuse the two, or at least I have.

What I’ve come to find is that a good idea does not come as a complete package. It’s loaded with possibility but there are a lot of moving parts that need to fall into place.

Intuition comes with a bow. It’s a gift – a complete one at that. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t take work to take intuition to fruition. It does, but it’s not complicated.

Possibilities are like pieces of furniture from Ikea. They need to be assembled. Intuition comes with a pre-built shelf ready to display your creation.

This “Intuition or Possibility” notion may have always been common sense to you, but it was a real “Aha” moment for me.

So, I guess you could say the complete message my intuition is sending me is that I will have to roll up my sleeves to make more possibilities happen.

All the best,

John

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I don’t know about you but, in the past, I have lived under the umbrella of one of life’s biggest myths: Until it happens to me, it doesn’t exist.

Oh yes, I acknowledged that IT happened to other people, but blindly held the notion that it would never happen to me. Those people were just mishandling their lives and got what they got as a result. At least that’s how it computed in my mind . . . until it happened to me.

I’m not going to describe any specific “IT” here, only point out the limiting, and may I add, “holier than thou” mindset that fertilizes that myth.

Some telltale signs of the “it’ll never happen to me” crowd are vociferous, dogmatic assertions that the “IT” people are weaker, stupider, unsophisticated, lazy, etc. In short, inferior.

It’s both sad and entertaining when you hear an anointed one start singing out of a different hymn book. Entertaining because you get to see them bucked off their high horse; sad because they could have been aware of others plight in a more compassionate way, a lot sooner.

Their new mantra is similar to a quote attributed to English reformer John Bradford: “There but for the grace of God go I.” If you don’t believe in God, substitute the words “good fortune” in your mantra. Which reminds me of something President Dwight Eisenhower said in a speech: “There are no atheists in foxholes.”

I don’t wish anything ‘bad’ on anybody; My only hope is that their belief that bad things only happen to bad people will stop being their headline, long before we read their obituary.

All the best,

John

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Sometimes the title of today’s blogpost takes on a pejorative tone, intimating that you are “too big for your britches.”

I ask the question without bias in an effort to point you in a direction to find out who you truly are.

This much is pretty clear to me: We aren’t who we “think” we are, but we get closer to who we are by noticing what we do.

My friend and celebrated teacher Jerry Stocking recently posted this which sheds abundant light on the topic:

“In the absence of precise data about what you should do, it is often useful to notice what you do. And let what you do lead you to what you do next, and let the sum of what you do provide a glimpse into who you are, as what you think serenades, providing background entertainment, mood music for the expression of who you really are.”

I find that you are the you that shows up between your thoughts, not the person who gets lost in them, or spouts them ad nauseam to anyone willing to listen.

Doing is an elixir; it calms the mind and engages the body. Like the ancient Chinese saying reminds us: “Talk doesn’t cook rice.”

My preference is this: Don’t tell me what you’re going to do; show me what you’re doing.

You can waste your days continually thinking about who your really are, OR you can do something about it.

All the best,

John

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On my walk yesterday, The Grasshopper popped in and had this to say: “People run scared into the arms of their conditioning.” It took the whole walk to glean some meaning from his musing.

There’s no doubt in my mind that we are a fearful society. We’ve been conditioned that way, and the conditioning gets stronger with each passing generation.

I harken back to when I was a kid on summer vacation from grade school. I would get up, get dressed, eat my breakfast, brush my teeth, wash my face, comb my hair, and head out the door looking for a friend to play with. We would explore the nearby woods, play catch, shoot hoops at a schoolyard, work on an outdoor Cub Scout project, or walk to a playground and work the monkey bars. We were gone all day and didn’t come home most days ’til dinner. No one was concerned for our safety, nor thought it unusual that we didn’t return home until later in the day.

Somewhere along the way, as I moved closer towards adulthood, “Stranger Danger” got conditioned into society and now it’s a way of life.

We have learned to be fearful and we pass that along to our children, and they to theirs.

I call it the “World War II Water Down Theory.” I believe most people will agree that their great grandparents had it harder than their grandparents, and their grandparents had it harder than their parents, and their parents harder than them. We’ve become a protective society over the generations and what got watered down is our resiliency, which naturally increases our fear factor.

We are less trained to deal with adversity with each passing generation. And when it hits, we run and hide. It’s really not our fault; we were conditioned that way. But conditioning is no excuse to remain cocooned in fear.

The remedy is recognition – to recognize that you have the ability to respond to any situation vs. react to it. Application of this recognition acts as our reconditioning agent.

We have to retrain ourselves to trust our resiliency to get us through. We’re all resilient; we’ve just forgotten, and that forgetfulness fosters our remaining frozen in fear.

It is possible to bounce back to our natural ability to be resilient. The first step is recognizing that we possess it, and step two is to employ it more often. What you’ll find is that you’re tougher than you think as you break the link to past conditioning.

All the best,

John

Listen to the recorded version.

Here is the recorded version of the Grasshopper Note for the week of 7-27-20.

Read the written version here.